The Serpent's Lullaby
by The Fairweather League
Summary: So, he buried the fake locket in Gringotts, and Harry wasn't entirely sure when it had come back out, though it seemed likely to him now that it was probably when the Muggles found out. He supposed it was inevitable.


**(Social/economic apocalyptic AU, in which Muggles are made aware of the existence of the Wizarding World)**

 **Word count: 3,722**

 **Disclaimer: I am, in no form, affiliated with Warner Bros. and/or J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. All concepts that have been written in this story are purely fan-imagined.**

* * *

He always kept it on him.

It was his token, it stayed as such even after he had gone, and the original was destroyed in bombardment of black and death and the dreamy visions he had had when he was a child. And the white king of the chessboard had driven it away, but then he had been captured and a new game began, so he kept it. Wrapped it around his neck like it was his chain, until Hermione bore the burden, and then Ron did; the cycle was prone to repeat itself, but that was the real thing, what _it_ well was.

But, of course, Harry could not carry a Horcrux, not if he was making no attempts to destroy its cannibalistic presence from existence. It had died: he saw _his_ red cat-eye explode in a flurry of red veins and cataracts, wounds and blind spots, when it had finally died, ( _it was finally dead; it was dead, it was dead, it was dead..._ ) and Voldemort could feel nothing of blood, but it was there and it was spattered and hidden on his death robes the way Hermione thought the ink to be on the wiped pages of Tom Riddle's diary, before it pulled Harry in and he knew better, knew because Ginny was too pale, knew because every time it came back to the blood. Black the first, and pumping and invisible the rest, still infecting the body, a parasite, since that was what Riddle had made of him.

The disease had been ridden from the world, and English witches and wizards heard the cry as it was howled from the battlefield of the broken Hogwarts walls: _You-Know-Who is dead! (Harry Potter was the one who killed him. Murder, except it wasn't murder; it was a trick, see? Sit down here and let me tell you all about it…)_

Through the handshakes and the tears, he abandoned the thing in a vault, where it was buried in the donations of gold from praying families, and it was all behind him. He began anew. My name is Harry Potter. I am married to Ginny Potter. We have three children, but one of them died horrifically in a Muggle bombing, so now there's only two who're still alive, and it doesn't matter because there's still pictures on the walls to prove that they could walk as babies. I am now divorced from Ginny Potter; Lily was almost permanently hospitalised.

My name is Harry Potter, but I'm not Harry Potter anymore.

It made for a lovely introduction. Nowadays, he avoided handshakes.

So, he buried the fake locket in Gringotts, and Harry wasn't entirely sure when it had come back out, though it seemed likely to him now that it was probably when the Muggles found out. He supposed it was inevitable. Certainly the two societies of magic and technology didn't have to reunite, but indeed, both had equal capabilities to strip the other, of its jacket or its cloak. That was what the Muggles did when a secondary school boy landed Google Maps onto Hogwarts, and people got curious. No casualties, 'no-guns-no-wands', the new saying, but magic didn't have the luxury of being invisible after that.

It was after Ginny quit work and rumours of Voldemort's return sprung back up again that he started to carry the locket in his coat (sometimes it was dangerous to wear robes; didn't want Muggles to get the wrong idea) like it was a pocket watch, antique and unused, but a necessary keepsake. The gossip was only natural. Hysteria was only bound to be exaggerated by past remembrance. _"…Definite evidence of an uprising of Dark Magic is certain … Wizarding World made aware of yet the third arrival of You-Know-Who…_ " Even Skeeter got her facts right sometimes, but it was an unprecedented act, to spread the fairytale of a resurrected Riddle, and it burned England to the ground.

Of course it made the Headlines: _The Return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named_ , it was called. The article was outrageous, 8,569 words of it, and it was afterwards that Harry had suffered through meddling interviews, in which he could not remain silent, and his will to preserve the world he had been introduced to after years of sleeping in a cupboard, years of Dudley's torment and the turned back of Petunia, was too great, and he was vehement in his insists that yes, a phenomenon has occurred, Muggles have been introduced to our world, and times have indeed been chaotic, but Voldemort has not come back.

This is what he said. He was constantly refuted, and precisely one week later The Bug published a second article, and Harry couldn't look too many people in the eye after that, because at that point all that could be seen was pity. He was supposed to be scared, that was what Skeeter said, and the fear gradually became a real one, though he could not let it be made palpable in his own flesh, as he would break down and everything would have been for nothing.

But soon Voldemort was a popular topic, as though he were real now, as though he was back. There was no validation, surely, and it was unlike the Tournament incident. That had been real, and the hysterical witnesses tended to match the patterns that Fred had suggested so long ago over the radio: _Mind you, if all the alleged sightings of him are genuine, we must have a good nineteen You-Know-Whos running around the place._

Comparing the nonexistent evidence to reality was much needed reassurance to Harry, and the fake locket was well enough as the utter truth. He had destroyed the Horcruxes, and Voldemort's soul was maimed. He would forever be unable to return. His fear dwindled, and his scar, free from the remnants of a madman's essence, remained painless, but the prodding sickness at his stomach did not leave.

Wizards and witches could not depart to the Muggle world to escape their own, to escape Voldemort, even when it seemed to them that he was not there, for the Muggles knew that they were alive, and nowhere was safe. Locked in the skin-tight crevice between magic and Muggle, both people of both sides could only look on at the bubbling battle, in fear, in disgust, in trepidation or hate. There were riots. Killings. The Death Eaters were rounded together, even if they had thrown away their bone masks, inspired by the tales of Voldemort's return that they did not believe to be true, which increased the scurrying animal fear of Daily Prophet readers. Sorcerers died and Muggles were tortured; it was the United Kingdom, not the Ministry, with the assistance of the U.S., who brought in federal troops to the island country, to 'keep the peace and bring reassurance back to the citizens of this Great Britain.'

It was because of this that the current Minister, Hannah Goshawk, allowed a temporary ban on the issue of underage magic, much to the displeasure of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Hermione allowed the bill to pass, but certainly the law was a controversial one. The main focus of discussion consistently remained on point to the reported cases of violence of the soldiers, where the parents would be unable to escape with their arms holding the shivering heads of children under the point of army rifles.

Muggle repelling charms became very popular.

Soon afterwards, though the Muggles did not know of the Civil War that had begun to bud within Wizarding society, gates sprung up like metal trees in gardens, neighbourhoods and streets, black and twisted shadows of silhouettes against the creamy sky. There was always a fire or a shooting, and so it seemed that the atmosphere could not retain its blue colour, and appeared always as it does in war and the apocalyptic movies Dudley used to watch, as though they were jokes. On the best of days it was a backdrop of gold as sunbeams struggled to pierce the cloudy sickness, but it was just a façade, because a golden day was after a band of senseless Wizards terrorised and murdered a Muggle neighbourhood and raped Muggle girls, and on the day following a terrorist group put its plans into action, and from underneath the ground the Ministry of Magic was morphed into a horrific thing of fire and countless deaths, and it had to have been quick: James was dead. Lily was in a white bed for five months before she could leave an operation room. Harry removed the pictures she'd set up in her ward; they were difficult to prise from the wall, and he couldn't help but think of James.

It was the incident that gave the witches and wizards of England the explanation that they had been waiting for. Soon magic was an idea under attack, and the Muggles were all brutes; what Hermione had worked hard for, and Ron and Harry and Dumbledore, all the rest of the rational, was extinguished over the course of one year and three months. Muggleborns were shunned in all communities. It was again apparent: they could no longer be apart of both worlds, and the Muggleborn Registration act came back into commission, though, thankfully, Umbridge took no part in its rebirth. The next day Minister Goshawk was killed in her sitting room, and remerging Death Eaters took to their polished black podiums and preached in disguise of highly ranked government officials that it was a sign of a new era. Those clever speeches soon became intricate code, and Voldemort was now no longer 'Lord,' but instead 'the people's will.'

Mr. Anthony Ramley was the next minister to take control, a pureblood, who belonged to a traditionally age-old family. Basil Lennon, the deputy Minister of Magic, was indeed in line to take Goshawk's place, but he had refused the top position. Percy was the only candidate Harry would have and did defend, but he was defeated, and there were eggshells on his speaking dais when he ran for election, cries of 'bloodtraitor' and 'fascist,' when he had been accused of suppressing his own kind's rights in favour of those of Muggles, those savage enemies of Wizarding kind. He was adamant in his suspicion of both Lennon and Ramley, though Harry knew it was a thing born of jealousy: _It's not as though I believe them to have used tools of sabotage, but it's an odd thing, isn't it? To turn down a position of Minister when one has readily immersed himself into the Ministry…_

But there wasn't enough time for Harry to wonder why a deputy had not accepted Minister. Perhaps, in this instability, a wizard would not want to bear the burden of such responsibilities. Perhaps it wasn't comfortable at the top.

Hermione was eventually let go; Ron had been furious on her behalf, but she had said to him hollowly that it was only to be expected. A rise of Pureblood supremacy was at the waxing stretch of dawn, and she was quite shocked she had made it for so long, as many other Muggleborns, and a good number of half-bloods, had been released over the course of the last months of Goshawk's rule. And not only was it the Muggleborns suffering, but the Auror Office, as well. There was a sensible Dark witch who had unwittingly began the argument: she had been factual and unbiased, describing that the true definition of Dark Magic was a morally neutral one: _"Dark Magic, though it is indeed true that many branches of it have been evolved to control and bring influence in physical ways, is an opposite of Light Magic, the latter of which focuses its power in ways that require less of a finalised goal, and is generally easier to bend to a user's whim, whilst Dark Magic is a more focus-oriented, and inflexible breed of magic. Both have the necessary capabilities to prove constructive or destructive, and neither can be classified in boxed terms of innately 'good' and 'bad,' as there are a great deal of branches of both magicks that have not been fully formed, and others that are in the process of being recovered throughout our lost history."_

She had gone on to say that a witch or wizard's natural elemental inclination was a hereditary trait, passed on either from squibs or purebloods to their children, regardless of blood status. Such discussions were discontinued officially, when it was revealed that her main priority was to adjust the goal of the Auror Office, and legalise certain Dark Magic that could be proved would not insight pain or unwilling consent upon the receiver of charms or spells or potions. Though her points had been lingered upon for a while, mainly due to Hogwarts' increasingly liberal position, (the school had recently opened to new extracurricular courses, for both practical and theoretical classes of Light and Dark magic) the consideration did not last, and she was unceremoniously demoted a few weeks later to a job of deskwork.

As was usual with such situations, the principles of the woman had been put to bad use. The movement was a very subtle one; Ramley had latched tightly to her conversations of Dark and Light Magic, and such ideals often became the very centre of his speeches. However, it was not a factual understanding of magic that was his key, but what he described as a constant oppression of Dark Magic, and pureblood traditions, by the invasion of Muggles and Muggleborns. And what a rallying point it was, a clever tactic. It wasn't so long before many listeners stopped hearing the tinges of blooming supremacy, and hatred for Muggles surged like Harry had never seen before, even in the days of Death Eaters, though it was true that a few of them had taken to involving themselves in the fight. Reclaiming the old ways as if the Second War had not taken place, and that they, the puppets, the soldiers, knew not of the horrors of a bloody red massacre, which they had begun to coddle in those fires whose smoke swathed from the burnt buildings, both Muggle and Magic.

The Auror Office had been accused many a time of oppression of the rights of magic, a common excuse as the ignorant supporters of Death Eaters swelled and climbed Ministry stairs. Ron, like Hermione, was sent off, and he did not argue, but trudged home so that he left muddy footprints in his wake. As though off a Hit List, members of the Office began to disappear. Their numbers shrunk, and it was not long before the Auror Team consisted of Harry Potter and precisely 49 others. Each completed triple shifts, and each worked ferociously into the day and night as Wizarding bands grew uncontrollably. By way of graffiti and broken bones, relations between the societies of Wizards and Muggles worsened.

Harry received the news after a meeting, and he couldn't quite remember what it had been about. Another bombing, maybe, where St. Mungo's Hospital had been obliterated, and all that was left of it were chunks of ashy feather pillows and body parts; it might have been about criminal arrest rate and the return of the banished Dementors, from the outlands of the far north.

But he supposed it didn't matter. Apparently he was to be removed from his position as Director. He would be gone completely, actually. Percy, though not Minister himself and quite unpopular at the moment, nevertheless held a very high status, and he was the one to bring Harry the news. It was with that scoffing manner, as though no worse decision could possibly have been made (it's only because of nonsense, really; when The Board had discussed it, it was all about supposed 'bad publicity').

Harry had thanked Percy, frustration that he could sense at the forefront of his mind, and he left quickly afterwards to call in as sick. It wouldn't do to lash out at Percy, pompous though he could be; he had only meant to help.

The weight of the empty locket grew in his pocket. He wasted no time apparating, a dim vision of a memory only just formed as his feet gave way, and the familiar, sickening sensation of constriction and blinding colour and sound was known.

It was dangerous, Harry knew, performing apparition with no clarity, but the sky was especially dark, and so he could not bring himself to care. He kept his eyes firmly taught and open.

Hogwarts lay before him in archaic disaster, as though the ruins of a medieval courtyard of King Arthur and his Slytherin prophet, Merlin, where the walls had come down and the towers of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were now indiscernible. Building blocks of stone set like honoured graves, the work of craftsmen and stone cutters burrowed far below the ground as it collapsed in a far away hellfire of bombs and blazes. It had happened in the summer. The forbidden forest still smouldered, blacker than ever it had been in its life, no agonised howls in the trees, there only were concentric lifelines of the wood ash, and the towering mountains beyond were further obscured with grey fog.

He had no business here, Harry knew. No Dumbledore, no Snape or Defence classes or embarrassed children, but the Potter Cottage was too soothing a place. Hogwarts had waned into an immortal age of desecrated rooftops, where dark sticks of the foundation twisted in upon themselves in torture, and Harry had to see the place for himself. The Cottage lied too often; it had remained green. There was still brush and ivy and a white picket fence. Hogwarts did not bring false promises, nor did it spawn shameful desires of healing that the brain was so adept to do.

Harry felt no sadness here, for it had been drained ungodly ages ago, because it was what he thought with greetings and hatred and desperate longing, James' white coffin and Lily's bandages and Albus' tear-tracked cheeks. Ginny's hair had aging streaks; Ron's eyes just weren't so blue anymore, like the deteriorating hard skies.

The locket was still heavy. His hand touched at the metal skin, cold, dulled with fake gold that produced no sheen in nonexistent sunshine. The green _S_ of Salazar Slytherin shown filthy and dark. He opened its face with thin hands, and there was a phantom of Dumbledore in the deadened magic of Hogwarts. The note was still there, folded and yellowing by the frightened craftwork of shivering hands.

 _"_ _To the Dark Lord  
I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more._

 _R.A.B."_

It wouldn't have changed, it shouldn't, it couldn't, and it hadn't. The writing was still willowy, still creased and uneven by shadowed folds of vellum, still so jade. There was no eye to be found.

 _I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more._

The Black brother had indeed been killed, this was an irrefutable thing that Harry knew, but had it been a cage where he could not take flight, had the job been the same bravery, or was the Avada Kedavra too quick to detect, and so there had been no time? His own frantic chest had been a bird, walking, hearing the beautiful sounds of lovely cracked leaves in the forest, while it was still breathing. The experience might have been similar. A Death Eater and Dumbledore's saving grace, there was no difference now.

He turned the locket in his withering palm, as the octahedron edges pushed at his skin. Numb.

Nothing could be done. Perhaps Hogwarts would be abandoned to rot, or it may be preserved, rebuilt whilst schoolchildren learn underground and develop spells to ward away rockets. At the moment, it could do nothing for moss.

Beating pulses thrummed in Harry's neck, and anger widened his eyes and made him throw the locket to the dirt, a blind desperation that led his fingers to clench upon the hilt of his dusty wand. His arms were far-reaching and merciless. He jabbed the wand in air, his holly a sword that he had used to destroy the first, the beginning form of nightmare that could only ever have been an innocent pitch diary.

The hate wouldn't have left so easy, but the locket did nothing. Only lay at the ground, as though awaiting its fate. This was what Dumbledore had earlier planned, scheming man, Horcrux at victorious justice, and it was of no consequence that Regulus had created this fake; he must look at the thing and remember red memories of pleading, and Voldemort's high, cruel laughter when he stuck that disfigured face into his baby cradle, the light that must surely have been a beacon upon a traced lightning bolt scar…

Harry couldn't do it. Dumbledore's guilty portrait had been destroyed along with Hogwarts. This was all that was tangible and real of him. He could not kill off Dumbledore.

Exhaustion replaced his fury like dwindling shades. Harry bent down to his knees, uncomfortable on the abused earth, and shoved the locket inside his coat pocket. Night-time was approaching, though there was no colour, only the rapid obscurity of what little sun penetrated through stubborn clouds.

It took little time until the moon shone, which could be seen full and plump with the subtle movements of a foggy night. Harry had gone for the last time with the coiling grip of apparition, and there were blue shadows as moonlight burned the outline of the towering Hogwarts gravestones.


End file.
